If Talk Could Exalt a Nation by Jerry Pendergast —National Poetry Month 2023

Jerry Pendergast reading.

The work of Jerry Pendergast, Chicago poet, poetry slam emcee, and contributor to the Revolutionary Poets Brigade Facebook group, has regularly been featured in our National Poetry Month posts.  His work is influenced by jazz, Irish cultural identity, urban observation, and a keen sense of social justice.  Today’s verse is inspired by his Irish roots.

                                Oscar Wilde.

If Talk Could Exalt a Nation

“We Irish are too Poetic to be poets…We are a nation of brilliant failures.

But we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks”. Oscar Wilde

 

If a stanza a river long

could sink a battle ship

If a run on sentence

taking a hearer through the mess u ages

could make a regiment

charging through a city street

drop their rifles.

 

If a tail end

of a narration

could disable a tank.

 

Wheels falling

with each change

Each embellishment

If an O’Carolan Concerto

Could misdirect a Cavalry

Put their commanders in a trance

If pipers could melt swords

Would Ireland be free?

Would it ever have been conquered?

 

If master fiddlers could make clergy

and officials scatter their thoughts

Dance like there were no floor director

Would Ireland imprison Wild Earnest Men?

 

Force young Women into work houses

for being young woman like?

or victims? Tell them their sins

are washed down the sink.?

Ban novels that win international awards?

 

Or would the state and the church

Be more well rounded.

Like the Ethiopian and Celtic crosses.

 

—Jerry Pendergast